You know what really grind my gears ?

You know what really grind my gears ? Thinking that everything is harder than it looks.

Let me explain. At our last paintball game, when checking the speed of our markers, mine was acting funny, never shooting at the correct speed. Either too slow or too fast, sometimes even shooting 3 feet in front of me.

So I disassemble the whole freaking thing. I check my air lines and see that my Quick Exhaust Valve is dirty. thinking that I found the issue, I try to clean it. I even ask the staff to help me clean it since I didn't have the correct tools. I reassamble the thing after it's clean and guess what ? I have a leak ! I almost rip the whole freaking thing apart and find the leak, screw a loose bolt and it's fine. I go to the speed check station for a second time. Same problem, can't fire at correct speed. Since I want to play, I take a rental marker and get in the field.

Speaking of rental, I'll never use one again. Once you get an electronic marker, you never go back to mechanical. You get so used to the fast rate of fire, almost no recoil and lightness. To make it worse, my rental had a CO2 bottle, while I use an Air tank. If I can't use my marker, I'm not playing.

But let's get back to the main issue. During lunch, I try again to fix it, to no avail. The damn thing won't fire correctly. I reluctantly use the rental again and finish the day with it.

That was back in July. I didn't touch my marker since then until earlier this week. I read on the net that most QEV can't be service so when they have stuff in them, they have to be thrown out. I said "Fine, I'll install the stock bolt back in. I replace the tubing with the correct length, but bock the bolt and it's good to go. I buy myself some balls (hard to test without them) and fire a couple shots in my backyard (had to be carefull, I have a bitchy neighbour). Looks fine to me but I want to test at a friend of mine, where I can shoot more and faster without disturbing anyone.

I went at his place yesterday. Put balls in the hopper and start to shoot. The first balls drop at my feet and the second doesn't get out of the barrel. I'm officially pissed at myself.

Earlier in the day, I was reading my marker manual at work. In the troubleshooting section, there is a question about shooting inconsistency. The first thing the manual mention is to change the battery... Which nobody ever tought about. I open the marker, change the battery and try to shoot again. I don't see where the ball land because it went too far. Same thing for the 5 balls after that. I aim for the plywood target my friend and I improvised and hit it. My marker is back to normal.

So I could have avoided all of this just by changing the freaking battery. I did all that for nothing, my QEV was still usable and I missed a lot of fun because I stressed over this and had to use a rental marker. The worse is that I had extra batteries at the game !

Remember, when something's wrong, check the battery !